


Pity and Condescension

by Limeritry



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Loneliness, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon, Texting, self-delusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28610241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Limeritry/pseuds/Limeritry
Summary: Akashi thinks Furihata is his metric to victory. Furihata takes Akashi as the prop to his self-esteem. They text all the time.How far can Kyoto possibly be from Tokyo? How long can a house on sand stand?
Relationships: Akashi Seijuurou/Furihata Kouki, Kagami Taiga/Kuroko Tetsuya
Comments: 32
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

“Furihata-kun, am I correct?” Akashi smiles politely down at Kuroko’s teammate. Furihata shakes, eyes wide like he’s looking at a nest of poisonous vipers. Behind them, Midorima squawks as his bag of dried mushrooms is sacrificed to the soup. It is nothing more and nothing less than Akashi would have expected for Kuroko’s birthday party, which has managed to connect the top high school basketball players across all of Japan to display their absurd incompetence at every other aspect of life. Except for himself, of course. Akashi has never been anything less than competent, barring Kuroko-related exceptions. “I believe we met at the Winter Cup?”

“Yes!” squeaks Furihata. The outburst, of impressive pitch and volume, coincides with a brief interval of silence in the rest of the room. For a single second, they command the attention of the masses. It’s nothing Akashi isn’t used to, but Furihata’s face approximates the shade of a ripened tomato and he shrinks into his own collar. His eyes dart around the room. It could not be a clearer call for assistance.

Akashi, gracious in all aspects, grants him the invisibility that he desires. Seamlessly, he transitions his attention to Murasakibara, who watches the soup pot with bored, single-minded focus.

“Huh?” Murasakibara looks up on hearing Akashi’s footsteps, then looks back down to meet Akashi’s eyes. Akashi, in a show of consideration, pretends not to notice. “Oh, it’s Aka-chin. Here, this is really good.”

“Thank you, Murasakibara.” Akashi leans against a counter, taking the bowl of soup from Murasakibara’s proffered hand. They watch in blissful silence as Midorima works himself into an incandescent rage – “don’t _eat_ it, that’s my lucky item!” Akashi eyes the soup. A single shiitake mushroom floats in amongst the rest of the vegetables and, gods be praised, tofu. The base looks to be some kind of bone broth. Akashi takes a sip. It is _very_ good. He bites into the mushroom. Midorima’s sacrifice has not gone to waste, he concludes.

Midorima is now trying to strangle his belaboured point guard. He needn’t bother, thinks Akashi idly. Takao Kazunari seems quite capable of choking to death by himself on his own laughter. Were he inclined to, Akashi would make a dramatic, oracular prediction: the future is set, the stars are aligned, tonight is the night Takao suffocates under the weight of the sexual tension between himself and Midorima that he chooses to pass off as humour. This I have seen with my all-seeing eye. Now ye all who listen, despair before me, for I am absolute. As things stand, he takes another sip of his soup.

Behind the chaos in the kitchen, a smaller gathering catches his attention. It’s all of Seirin’s benchwarming first years, gathered in a huddle on the tatami mats. Furihata is saying something. As one, they look up to see him staring at them. Their faces blanch. They scatter like so much ash before the wind.

“Ne, Aka-chin,” Murasakibara says, “Mido-chin is really loud and annoying, and still sort of stupid. I’m almost out of snacks.”

Akashi, who always came prepared for all possibilities, pulls an umaibo out of his bag. “Murasakibara,” he says, eyes still on the spot that the first years had vacated, “am I intimidating?”

Murasakibara’s fingers, curled around the umaibo, freeze. Silence stretches, interminable.

“You can tell me the truth, you know,” Akashi says at last.

“Aka-chin isn’t intimidating at all,” Murasakibara responds immediately, and a little too quickly. “I’m going to find Muro-chin. Do you want any sandwiches?”

Akashi declines the offer, almost perfunctorily, as before the words have quite finished leaving his mouth Murasakibara is already heaving himself up and moving at a brisk pace towards the countertop. _Well_ , he thinks, eyes following Murasakibara’s towering, fleeing back.

It’s indication of a problem. Akashi Seijuurou does not tolerate problems, especially not in himself.

Years of working with Momoi have taught Akashi that data collection is useless without an adequate sample. Murasakibara he has history with. Furihata could be a potential outlier. Before he moves to act, he should ascertain from a few more sources that the problem exists.

After the Rakuzan-Yousen practice match, Akashi asks the members sharing his train carriage: “Am I intimidating?”

Nebuya chokes on his sushi. Hayama freezes in place. Mibuchi drops his magazine.

Akashi waits. The train rumbles along, leaving Tokyo in the dust. They still have two hours to go before they reach Kyoto, and Akashi can be very patient.

“Well,” Nebuya says.

“Um,” Hayama says.

“Er,” Reo says.

Mayuzumi’s absence is a palpable thing. They have yet to promote a new, permanent starter, and are instead swapping in different members of the first-string as the situation necessitates. The gap of sharp, disinterested sarcasm remains like an open wound.

“A little bit?” Nebuya says at last, deciding to take the fall.

“Only a little though, Sei-chan!” Reo adds hastily, a chorus to which Hayama quickly joins, in response to Akashi’s downturned mouth. He kicks Nebuya’s muscled shin. Nebuya winces.

 _So it’s true_ , Akashi thinks, grimly.

It is not, Akashi must acknowledge, that intimidation is without its uses. Intimidation has served him well so far. Unwanted persons keep an appropriate distance. He always has a seat in the common room for meals. No one has ever attempted any sort of hazing ritual on him. Support for his leadership had been largely unanimous (it remains so, surprisingly).

The problem lies in being unable to control such a perception of himself. Akashi has no wish to be treated like a particularly fearsome leper by any random stranger that he chances to come across. That’s something he wishes to reserve for business competition and jealous malcontents. He reaches up to touch his left eye, idly. In the bathroom mirror, it stares back at him, darkened by shadows to a rich shade of burgundy. Steam, dissipating after his shower, clears away in a white-mist halo from the mirror. Sometimes he can barely recognise himself.

Akashi draws his bathrobe around himself and turns resolutely from the mirror. He’s trying to be better, after all.

It’s by chance that the answer strikes him, a lightning bolt from the blue sky. Midorima would have called it fate. Akashi can almost see him, taped fingers pushing up his glasses, oversized stuffed toy held firmly in the crook of his elbow. _Man proposes, God disposes._

It may be, Akashi thinks, staring into Furihata’s terrified, quaking face, that he hasn’t given Midorima enough credit. The other boy looks like a stiff breeze could knock him over, and his eyes are glazed over somewhat worryingly. Akashi smiles. Furihata shrinks like a worm left too long in the sun.

“Furihata-kun,” he says, untucking a hand from the pocket of his jacket to lift in a wave. Furihata mimics him, robotic. “what a surprise to see you in Kyoto.”

“Yes!” Furihata’s face makes a strange expression. It seems as if all the muscles in his face are spasming at once in different directions. After some observation, Akashi determines that Furihata is trying to corral his face into a smile, and graciously does not comment on the endeavour’s success. “I’m here with my family.”

“Interesting.” Akashi himself could imagine nothing less so, actually, but he’s self-aware enough to recognise that his family situation is in the extreme minority of the Japanese population. “Do you come here often?”

“No!” Furihata squeaks. “My aunt moved here for business! We’re helping her get settled in!”

The short, staccato bursts of speech burst into the air like anxious fireworks. A mother across the street stares at them, and pulls her daughter closer. Furihata goes pale, then red, and clams up.

“How lucky, then,” Akashi says. He means it too. It really is a remarkable coincidence that Furihata’s outing to Kyoto has coincided not just in time, but also in location, with Akashi’s bimonthly game of streetball with the Rakuzan regulars (for team building purposes), and just as remarkable that they have both found themselves meeting alone, separate from the groups to which they each belonged. “Out of every possible path we both could have taken, I chose the same one that you would take, on this particular day, for this particular occasion. There are far more ways we could have missed each other than there were ways to meet. How incredibly fortuitous. We should exchange phone numbers.”

He pulls his phone out of the pocket and stares expectantly at Furihata. Furihata, whose head is mindlessly bobbing up and down, freezes and whips his phone out.

“Yes!” he says, fervently, feverishly. “That would be delightful!”

They exchange numbers. Furihata’s fingers shake the whole while, and Akashi texts him just to be sure the number is correct. It’s an unassuming, polite, “Hello”. Furihata’s phone pings. He starts, but doesn’t check it.

Akashi smiles. “I look forwards to being friends.”

Furihata’s face stretches somewhat grotesquely. He says something so quickly that it’s unintelligible, points wildly behind him, and flees. Akashi assumes the small cluster of three further down the street to be his family, and is proved satisfyingly right when Furihata skids to a stop before them.

Furihata, he thinks, who is so terrified of him that speaking to him causes earthquake tremors under the force of his nervous vibration. Furihata, who might faint even when Akashi turns the most gentle and winsome of his smiles on him.

Furihata, who will serve nicely as his victory metric. If Akashi can reassure Furihata into accepting him as a presence not to be feared, he can reassure anyone. If Akashi can befriend Furihata, Akashi has clearly won.

 _How fortuitous_ , he thinks, this time to himself. He basks in his own superiority, his absolute absolution, found on a desolate, small street with concrete walls stretching up over him to block out the sun. The silence pays tribute to him, interrupted only by the hesitant cheeps of birds. Fate is playing by Akashi’s rules once more, the wheel turning instead of bucking at his touch.

Behind him, Mibuchi calls from around the corner: “Sei-chan, I’ve got the Pocari!” and Hayama: “Oi Akashi, where’d you go!” Nebuya says, a little quieter, “we didn’t lose him, did we?”

Akashi turns, mortal once more. “Thank you, Mibuchi,” he says, taking the proffered Pocari. Mibuchi smiles, a little uneasily. No one except for Akashi himself is used to the sudden switch back to formal normalities. Mibuchi doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with himself when his captain and junior isn’t blatantly disrespecting him in a show of arrogance through the use of his personal name. “Let’s go before we miss the bus.”

On the bus ride back to Rakuzan, Akashi checks Oha-Asa. Sagittarius is ranked first, and he resolves to mail Midorima his lucky items for the next week.

Akashi’s phone goes off during dinner. He wipes his mouth with his napkin and pulls the offending device out of his pocket. Furihata has replied to him.

 _Hi!_ says the message, and nothing else.

Hayama leans in. “Ooh, who is it?” His eyes sparkle, his teeth gleam. He buzzes with curiousity. Akashi is not in the habit of receiving texts at dinner. Akashi is not, in fact, in the habit of receiving texts at all. Mibuchi leans in on the other side. “Don’t crowd him, Kotarou!” to which he gets a whine of “Reo-nee, you’re doing the same thing!”

Mibuchi chooses to ignore that, and says, more gracefully but just as irrepressibly, “Someone’s texting Sei-chan?”

Nebuya, busily going through his sixth serving, shows himself to be indomitably dedicated to food and his own stomach.

Akashi smiles, pleased, and let’s his phone’s screen go dark.

“A friend,” he replies.


	2. Chapter 2

Furihata slams his head into his locker door the minute the senpais have vacated the room. Hyuuga shoots a suspicious look over his shoulder, before deciding to leave them be with a shout of, “Remember to lock up the gym when you’re done!”

“I think I’m dying,” Furihata says into the blue plastic. “No one can possibly be this perfect.”

Fukuda and Kawahara nod understandingly. Kawahara even goes so far as to pat him on his back, avoiding the sweat patches that are drying surely, albeit slowly, in the stuffy air of the gym locker. Kuroko stares, judgementally. Kagami shoots them all a look of complete disbelief.

“Over _Akashi_?” he says. “ _Seriously?_ ”

The three first-years turn to shoot him a baleful glare. Kuroko redirects his gaze, continuing to stare. His eyes hold the judgement of someone who has seen Akashi with baby fat in his cheeks, holding a clipboard and looking up hopefully at Nijimura-san. _I was there_ , his eyes say, _when Akashi tried to reach the hoop and fell on his ass_. _I was there when Akashi was still a mortal, struggling for divinity_.

“You wouldn’t _understand_ , Kagami!” Fukuda says for all of them. It’s their shared bonding experience, the remembrance of Akashi on the court. Arrogant, staring down at them, crushing them into a reminder of their own painful mediocrity. The freezing pressure of his half-closed eyes. The unbreakable control which had turned out to be not-so-unbreakable after all. Seeing an unreachable summit, struggling like Atlas under the weight of the sky. Kagami wouldn’t understand. Kagami, after all, has never been _mediocre_.

The three first-years sigh as one.

“His eyes, man,” Fukuda sighs. Which is fair. Akashi’s eyes, and even Kagami must admit this, are attention-drawing. Enchanting, if one were inclined to be complimentary. Incisive and intense. _His gaze was piercing_ , a romance novelist might describe him. _It pierced my heart, and I passed away, my soul no longer my own_. Kagami rubs his cheek. The graze, long healed, smarts with a phantom pain.

“His shoulders,” sighs Kawahara. Unbidden, the memory of Akashi’s back, his strong, sloping shoulders, rises before them. They’ve all seen it, from the floor, looking up in disbelief and falling hard as he rises up, higher than his frame should take him, invincible into the air. From behind, through the gaps in his entourage, an emperor holding court to a train of courtiers and generals. Kuroko’s gaze, if possible, grows even blanker.

“His smile,” sighs Furihata.

Silence.

The room turns to stare at him as one. Kagami actually looks contemplative, for once. For the first time since the conversation has started, life sparks in Kuroko’s eyes.

Furihata looks up, the locker leaving a red imprint on his forehead.

“What.” The collective silence of the room continues. “ _What_. He has a nice smile!”

“Um.” Fukuda says.

Throughout the majority of the Winter Cup Final, and definitely when the first-years had been marking him, Akashi’s face had been schooled into perfect, composed, neutrality. The line of his lips, elegant, carved, chiselled, had remained in a small, neutral downturn. Not enough to convey any particular emotion apart from intense, detached focus. He had been like marble. Galatea fully formed, stone and sensual, frozen and fluid. He had not, never at _them_ in any case, been smiling.

Akashi, the three first-years agree, or at least _thought_ they agreed, looks like the sort of person you can write thirty sonnets to and never send a single one of them, because you know the answer to be _not even in the same dimension_ before ever picking up a pen. _That_ was how perfect, how perfectly cold he had seemed.

“Does he?” Kawahara asks, rather weakly. A complicated expression on his face suggests that his imagination is torturing him with hypotheticals of how such a situation could occur.

“No, Furihata’s right,” Kagami says.

Furihata, Kawahara and Fukuda stare at him. The past few weeks of Kagami’s incomprehension in the face of their admiration flashes through everyone’s collective memory. The stares grow suspicious as the content of what Kagami says registers. Kagami flushes, and shuffles his feet.

“ _Is_ he, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko speaks for the room as a whole, like a ghost harnessing the voice of an oracle and speaking unexpected truths into the living world. He has migrated to Kagami’s elbow when no one had been looking. Kagami shrieks, turns around, and shrieks again at the sight of Nigou, who has come in to sit at Kuroko’s feet, and who starts yapping as soon as he sees Kagami’s terrified face.

“Kuroko you bastard!” he shouts, moving with lightning speed to the other end of the locker room. “Get that monster away from me!”

Kuroko’s lips twitch. Before Nigou can charge Kagami, as he is clearly prepared to do, Kuroko picks him up and secures him in one elbow.

“I had no idea you thought that way about Akashi-kun,” Kuroko remarks. “You’ll have to get in line, I’m afraid. He has a cross-national fanclub and received his own weight in Valentine’s chocolate last year. I believe Momoi-san has more information on the subject if you want to scout out the competition.”

Kagami splutters. “It’s not like _that_. Just – his smile at the end – when he shook hands with you – you know! It was a nice smile! That’s all!”

In all fairness, Kuroko understands what Kagami is trying to say. It had barely been a smile, really. The smallest upturn of the lips, slightly bitter, somewhat resigned, a little glad. A softening of the brow. A gaze that was warm instead of cold. A proffered hand. Kuroko had not seen that Akashi for years, and never like this, defeated, gracious, tears gathered like a mermaid’s pearls, unfallen in the corners of his eyes. He had not realised how much he had hungered for it until he had taken Akashi’s hand, victory sweet behind his teeth.

“I fully understand, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko says with a blank face. “Akashi-kun can be very charming. I didn’t expect Furihata-kun to be so aware of Akashi-san’s softer attractions, however.”

Furihata goes an alarming shade of red. “Well, I mean,” he blusters, “he was so nice at your birthday party – “ the other two nod along, fellow acolytes reminiscing over the manifestation of their object of worship – “and I met him in Kyoto – “

“You _what_ ,” Fukuda says. Kawahara clutches his chest, the image of tragic betrayal.

“Well, I mean – “

“Is that when you realised Akashi-kun had a nice smile?” Kuroko adds. Furihata shoots him a betrayed look, but before he can say anything he’s accosted by Kawahara and Fukuda, shouting about a traitor in the ranks. Kagami, who is a slow learner but not actually stupid to the point of becoming completely unabsorbent, gives Kuroko a squinty-eyed, suspicious look.

“What the hell,” Kagami says, when after a minute the three have joined ranks once more and have moved on to crying about Akashi’s hair, peppered with bursts of _you have his PHONE NUMBER_ and _why didn’t you TELL US._ He stretches, packs the last of his stuff away. “Oi, Kuroko, let’s go to Maji Burger. I’m hungry.”

“Kagami-kun is always hungry,” Kuroko replies, but obligingly follows. As he goes, however, he shoots Furihata a long, thoughtful glance.

“No, but seriously,” Fukuda says, once the furore has died down and they have once again achieved something like sanity. “You _talk_ to him? Like, actually _talk_?”

He sounds like he can’t decide whether he’s incredibly jealous or deeply respectful of Furihata. Akashi has always managed to strike both fear and love into the hearts of common men, after all. Celebrities, idols, gods, are easier loved from a distance than close-up, where they can render you to dust with a few, carefully chosen words. Or a glance. A glance from Akashi is enough to put most of the world on its knees. Seirin would know.

“Yes,” Furihata says defensively. He clutches the phone a little tighter to his chest, like he’s worried that if he doesn’t hold on tight enough, the log of text messages, three full days of good mornings and good nights after that fateful hello, will disappear into the tattered fragments of an extended daydream.

“But about what?” Kawahara asks. His tone makes it clear that he can’t imagine what shared topics of conversation there could possibly be between people like them and people like _Akashi_. To be honest, Furihata can’t imagine either, which is why the entirety of his texting history with Akashi sounds like it’s been conducted by a chatbot, programmed to reply after prompting.

“About,” he tries anyway, keenly conscious of the eyes of the other two, “about – about stuff. Casual stuff. Small talk!”

A moment passes in silence. Kawahara’s face has gone rather green at the thought of engaging in small talk with _Akashi Seijuurou_. “Do you talk about the _weather_?” he asks, like he can’t decide whether he’s more scandalised or disappointed.

Furihata groans. “Okay, so we don’t actually talk. I don’t know why he gave me his number and all we’ve done is exchange hellos and good mornings and it’s so _weird_.”

A moment passes in silence.

Fukuda, in a show of reason, says, “Maybe we should ask Kuroko. He’s known Akashi the longest, after all.”

They contemplate the idea together. It’s not a bad thought. It is, in fact, a better plan than whatever else their meandering conversation had been on the verge of producing. But Teikou and its memories is a touchy subject for Kuroko, hidden in a way that wavers between defensive and protective. No one is really quite sure whether Kuroko has chosen to throw it all away or bury it close to his heart, whether in his measured, tight-lipped rationality he is displaying a whole-hearted rejection of Teikou or if instead he’s curled around it like a dragon around a tower. He’s Seirin’s Kuroko, through and through, but what that means for Teikou, no one can quite pin down, and Kuroko, although far from reticent to share, has made clear enough that the past is firmly in the past.

Furihata lets out a limp sigh, staring down at his phone.

“Yeah,” he says, slipping it into his pocket. “I’ll try that.”


	3. Chapter 3

“So?” Kagami says gruffly behind a mountain of orange-wrapped burgers. The neon, garish light of Maji Burger are a familiar comfort, having been witness to many, similar discussions. “What’s your crazy ex-captain doing with Furihata?”

“I had no idea Kagami-kun was so concerned about Akashi-kun,” Kuroko says, straight-faced. “Are you sure I shouldn’t put you into contact with Momoi-san?”

While Kagami chokes and his face approaches the same shade as his hair, Kuroko considers the actual question. After some contemplation, he arrives at a tentative answer just as Kagami’s managed to thinly escape death by suffocation.

“At first glance,” he says, trying the words out on his tongue, “it appears that Akashi-kun is trying to make friends.”

Kagami drops his burger. It splatters into a sad pile of cheap mayo, soggy bread and wilted lettuce on the oily, stained wrapping paper.

“Kagami-kun, that’s disgusting.”

Kagami gives no indication of having heard him. “I’m sorry,” he says, “repeat that.” He stops, then starts again. “Please.”

The overly formal ‘please’ gives Kuroko pause. He looks at Kagami carefully. Kagami looks back. One eye is twitching. The split eyebrow, which Kuroko has long come to accept as one of those cute, weird quirks of Kagami’s, or at least his DNA, shivers in double.

“I don’t think I will,” Kuroko says at last, still staring at those two strands of red. “I think Kagami-kun is going into shock, and I would rather not be the reason Seirin loses its ace to a stroke. Besides, Akashi-kun always looks as if he is trying to make friends. As to his actual intentions, I can’t speculate. I don’t know him that well.”

“I thought you Miracles were all attached at the hip.” Kagami does a horrific hip-jut that looks as if it was aiming for seductive and landed on confused instead. It is testament to Kagami’s abilities, Kuroko thinks, that Kagami was aiming for neither but managed both. “Like a set unit.”

“That is, and has always been, an incorrect perception.” Kuroko sips his vanilla milkshake. “While I don’t agree with how he went about it, even I have to admit that Akashi-kun was right when he said that we had grown too strong to be bound together. I think, in the most part, we made better rivals than we did teammates. That way, we could use all our energy to come together instead of pull apart. Besides, most of us haven’t seen each other for almost a year. I know I can barely recognise myself from before – what’s to say about the rest of them?”

Kagami’s brows furrow, and one hand goes up to play with the ring, hung on his chain necklace, positioned in a place of pride around his neck. He wipes his other hand, smeared with mustard, on a paper napkin. “I get that,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t be – you know.”

Kuroko watches Kagami struggle, amused although his face does not show it. He understands. There are some things that can only be shared by the people who were there, at that exact time, contributing to the reason why things fell apart in the first place. It’s the same way that Kagami will always be the _honourary_ member, inducted at a later date and privy to some secrets, but not all. It’s why Kuroko doesn’t pry too deeply on Himuro Tatsuya, all that swirling unease that had been lanced through in the Yousen match, but still casts the memory of shadow.

“I understand,” he allows, “but even among the Miracles, Akashi-kun was different.”

“No shit,” Kagami snorts. “Out of you insane lot, he somehow manages to take the cake.”

“Kagami-kun,” Kuroko admonishes, but does not deny it. Kagami’s first impression of Akashi was hardly optimal, after all.

Even to him, Akashi is an enigma wrapped in mystery wrapped in secret. Kuroko could speak calmly and with no little fondness on Kise, with an edge of resigned sarcasm on Midorima, painfully and gratingly on Aomine, and incisively but affectionately on Murasakibara. But on Akashi, his insights twist back in on themselves, swallowed by doubt. Akashi performs at the same rate Kuroko dissects – not insurmountable, as Kuroko might have said in the past. The Winter Cup had sharply disabused everyone of Akashi's capacity for defeat. But still, difficult and tiring to keep up with constantly.

Kuroko leaves Akashi’s actions uncommented, without the same footnotes he attaches to everyone else. The most he can say is how each action affected _him_ , but the whole, frustratingly, never coalesces.

“Well, as long as it doesn’t affect Furihata’s basketball,” Kagami says with a yawn. “Maybe Akashi can give him some tips?”

Kuroko sips the last of his milkshake. “I’ve always wondered, Kagami-kun, if your brain could ever evolve to fit more than basketball. Your constancy reassures me.”

Kagami splutters.

“It’s not that I’m bothered by it, per say,” Furihata elaborates the following morning. He’d come to find Kuroko during the break. Kagami, on hearing the opening sentences, had groaned, slammed his face into his folded arms and loudly declared he was taking a nap. He isn’t, Kuroko can tell by his breathing. “I just can’t figure out _why_. I mean, he’s _Akashi_.”

“Furihata-kun has many worthwhile qualities,” Kuroko points out mildly, “and is a better person than Akashi-kun has ever proved himself to be.”

Furihata reddens. “Aww, Kuroko.” He scratches the back of his head and looks away, bashfully.

“But still,” Furihata continues, “it’s _Akashi_ , you know? I mean, not that I’m not flattered, it just doesn’t make any sense. Out of everyone in Seirin, you’d think it would Kagami he’d go after.”

Kagami, manfully still pretending to be asleep in the desk in front, twitches.

Kuroko silently concurs. Furihata’s qualities, although many, are not the sort to make any impression on someone like Akashi. He has to admit, on the subject of _why Furihata_ , Kuroko’s in the dark as well.

Akashi, Kuroko had been led to believe, had always had a sense for the extraordinary and theatrical. Furihata, whatever else he is, does not fulfil either of those two criteria.

Kagami, of course, fills both. If Akashi were to go after Kagami, however, Kuroko would not be feeling so helpful as to be giving friendship advice in the early morning.

Overall, the attention is suspicious. Kuroko’s trust in Akashi’s better nature is limited at the best of times. He briefly contemplates using the considerable influence Furihata has offered him to warn him off, before dismissing the idea as premature. There is nothing, after all, to show for the burgeoning relationship other than a string of robotic text messages and a lot of idolisation.

Nonetheless, he feels compelled to say _something_. He picks out his words carefully, treading a tentative path between sharp rocks.

“Akashi-kun has never done anything without purpose. He always has a goal in how he deals with things. This extends into his personal relationships.”

“You think he wants something from _me_?” Furihata goes starry-eyed. The idea seems to him enchanting, intoxicating, a position of incredible worth. It had seemed that way to a great many people before Furihata, Kuroko among them.

“Furihata-kun,” Kuroko says sharply. Furihata starts, breaking out from his reverie. “What I am saying is that Akashi-kun does not have friends. He has goals, and he has the people he uses to get them. Please keep this in mind when you interact with him.”

Furihata looks down, face turned serious. Kuroko looks straight at him without looking away, unwilling to back down on what, as the shadows pass over Furihata’s face, he knows to be a point of contention. Akashi has a way about him, after all, that makes him easy to presume close. It’s a mistake many people have made.

“That’s…a pretty harsh summary,” Furihata states at last.

“It is derived for the most part from personal experience,” Kuroko replies, watching Furihata flinch and swallow. _You wouldn’t understand_ , Kuroko thinks, with that strange and twisted pride of having been part of the Generation of Miracles. The Winter Cup rises up before his eyes. He had hated Mayuzumi at first, then pitied him. The first model, the second model, what did it matter? They were all placeholders in Akashi’s grand sweep to victory. “And the rest I have confirmed from observation.”

There’s nothing to say to that. Brief, mutinous expressions cross Furihata’s face, then scatter like leaves in the wind. Kuroko lets the silence do the work for him.

“So,” Furihata-kun begins, “I…shouldn’t?”

“Furihata-kun should do as Furihata-kun thinks is best,” Kuroko says. “This isn’t to say that Akashi-kun does not make for an excellent conversation partner and an engrossing shogi opponent, if Midorima-kun is to be believed. He is exceedingly polite and charming when he tries, which I believe he is doing with you. I’m merely giving you a warning not to…presume.”

“Right,” Furihata-kun says, looking a little crestfallen.

Kuroko hesitates. There’s something else that he wants to say, but he’s not sure it’s his place.

“Remember as well,” he decides on at last, “that Akashi-kun is human.”

Furihata blinks. “Well, of course,” he says. “I know _that_.”

Kuroko stares at Furihata. “If, say, Kise-kun were texting you,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “or Momoi-san, or Aomine-kun, Midorima-kun, or even Murasakibara-kun, would you be here asking me these questions?”

Furihata goes crimson. He falls silent for a few moments. Within those few moments, Kuroko wonders at his own hypocrisy. After all, Akashi is _different_ , isn’t he? It’s the ideal Kuroko has spent almost all his energy on destroying, and yet still not something he can completely disbelieve.

He leans his cheek on his palm, watching the minute expressions pass over Furihata’s face. To be treated as gods or demons is the enduring legacy of the Generation of Miracles. It’s what drove them together, then drove them apart. An entire generation of basketball players have broken themselves in despair against them, and turned to idolatry when it became clear that there was no point in opposition.

At last, Furihata bows slightly. “Thank you for your advice, Kuroko!” He straightens, with new, bright determination in his eyes. “I’ll try my best!”

Kuroko’s eyes follow him as he darts out of the room, weaving through the desks and finally out the door. He gets the feeling that Furihata hadn’t fully understand what he was trying to say.

“Sometimes I forget you’re just as insane as the rest of that lot,” Kagami says, getting up from the desk. His forehead is red from where he’s pressed it against is forearms. It is disarmingly charming. “For someone who claims to be strangers with Akashi, you sure can say a lot about him.”

“I have no idea what you mean, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko says mildly. Kagami snorts, and the bell rings as the students flood back to class.

Akashi’s phone goes off in class. The room freezes in place. Students look about themselves as if searching for signs of the apocalypse. The teacher, torn between his professional duties and Akashi’s status, goes pale and begins to sweat.

“My apologies,” Akashi says, largely for their sake. “I’ll make sure it won’t happen again.”

The room takes a collective sigh of relief. The teacher nods, glossing over the incident, and goes back to detailing the workings of electromagnetic force. Chalk scratches on the blackboard, pens scratch against paper, and within minutes hushed murmurings once again begin around the room. When attention has been sufficiently removed from him, Akashi discreetly takes out his phone, and prepares to set it on silent.

The text, which he had thought would be some form of spam – his peers and the staff wouldn’t text him in school hours, or really, text him at all – is instead a message from Furihata-kun.

Akashi’s brows arch. An interesting, and not-unwelcomed development.

 _How’s your day going?_ The text reads, followed by a blurry picture of a blackboard and a balding professor. The similarities, Akashi notes, looking up at his own professor, are uncanny. _Class always feels like the same thing on repeat_.

 _I completely understand_ , Akashi replies. Then, considering twice, he adds, _but you should focus anyway_. _If you need any help, I’m happy to help you study_.

With that said, he slides his phone back into his pocket.

“When electric and magnetic fields intersect,” the professor drones, “force is created. This is the basic principle behind magnetic induction. Motors are static otherwise, but through these seemingly innocuous interactions, what was static can begin to move.”

Akashi clicks his pen. Movement, it seems, has begun.

He checks his phone after class and is gratified to find, _wow really? That would be awesome! Only if you have time though_.

 _Don’t be ridiculous,_ Akashi texts back, savouring his impending victory, _I always have time for friends._


	4. Chapter 4

Furihata breathes deeply once, twice, three times as the clock ticks, second by second. It’s 6:27. He’s organised a study session with Akashi at 6:30 – _a study session with Akashi Seijuurou_. It’s like the very fundamental laws of the universe are being broken before his eyes. He wouldn’t be surprised if he won the lottery tomorrow. Things like this just aren’t meant to happen to people like him – but clearly they are. It’s as intoxicating as it is terrifying.

He claps his cheeks with both hands and inhales one more time. His math notes are spread out before him, a dizzying array of trigonometry with diagrams that range from the tame to the inexplicable. Triangles in 3D? Forget it. By the time he would have finished understanding the question, half the exam probably would have gone by.

Does Akashi struggle with homework? Furihata can’t imagine it. Akashi seems to cut like a knife through the world – what doesn’t step aside is simply split in two, a clear path appearing like Moses parting the Red Sea.

Except Akashi would be his own God, would need no prayers, no faith in anything other than himself. Even now, the idea that they won, against that golden, terrifying gaze, feels unreal. People like Furihata struggle with trigonometry. People like Akashi – people like Akashi don’t struggle at all.

 _It’s a state I can’t even imagine,_ Furihata thinks, equal parts bitterness and admiration. _He’s so far out of my league we might as well be moving in different planes of existence._

Kuroko’s advice comes back to him: “Don’t presume.” To be honest, Furihata thinks that Kuroko probably could have saved his breath on that one. Even if Akashi were to shower him with all the attention and affection in the world – the thought alone makes his brain break a little with how unrealistic it is – Furihata knows better than to _presume_. He’s self-aware enough to know that if Akashi’s guilty of going into this weird text-study-thing that is beginning to burgeon between them with impure motives, Furihata shares the same charge. He’s not naïve enough to be pursuing friendship either, not with _Akashi Seijuurou_.

He still doesn’t know quite what he wants, but he knows there is _something_. He can feel it, like the wafting scent of a feast in an unseen room. He just has to find the right door.

His phone rings. It’s – he checks the clock on the wall – 6:30 on the dot. Akashi’s name flares, proud and just a little obnoxious, as the caller.

Furihata finds that after having cut his own expectations and dreams down to size, he’s perfectly calm. He picks up, his fingers only trembling a little.

“Hello,” he squeaks, then hurriedly clears his throat.

“Hello,” Akashi’s voice comes in from the other side. The usual richness of it is made tinny through the phone. It’s like facing the off-brand version of a luxury product. “I trust you are well.”

“Ah, yes.” Furihata swallows. “Um, how are you?”

“Well,” Akashi states firmly. “Now, what was it you needed help with?”

“Um, trigonometry.” Furihata runs a hand through his hair, pushing his fringe out of his eyes so he can stare more clearly at the offending problems covering his desk. “It’s not that I don’t understand it,” he hurries to explain, “I get it when the teacher’s going through it in class, but I’m really slow, and I don’t even know how to _start_ with the problems that are in 3D – when it’s explained it’s all so clear, but I could never think of something like that on the spot.”

“Talk me through one of the problems you’re having trouble with.”

There’s something about how Akashi speaks, Furihata thinks, as his mouth begins moving on autopilot, that demands instant obedience. Even when he’s making a request, it’s always in the tone of a command. The intonation goes down instead of up at the end. It’s the inverted mirror to Kuroko, whose every word sounds like a request, but is equally a command. Sometimes, the imprints of Teikou are so clear that Furihata cannot help feeling sidelined.

“And that’s where I got up to, but from then on I’m stuck,” he finishes, anticlimactically, with a flourish at the scribbled-over diagram before remembering that he’s on the phone and Akashi can’t see him. He coughs into his fist.

“Hmm.” Akashi’s voice comes through, contemplative. He doesn’t sound as if he’s thinking about how to solve the problem, so much as it is that he’s ruminating over how to explain to _Furihata_ how to solve the problem. Furihata, despite himself, flushes. “Go back two steps.”

 _I really am a coward_ , Furihata reflects gloomily, as he follows Akashi’s instruction to the hilt. By the end of the hour-long session, all of Furihata’s trigonometry problems have met their doom in the face of Akashi’s unrelenting guidance. Somehow, this fact does nothing to make Furihata feel like less of an idiot.

“Well,” Akashi says into the pause. “I hope this has been helpful.”

There’s not a single hint of uncertainty in his voice. It’s sort of hard to say anything to an opinion stated in a such a way to clearly brook no disagreement. Still, Furihata gives it his best shot.

“Uh,” Furihata replies, then, “yes! It’s been great! Thanks for taking the time to help me out, Akashi-san!”

“No need to stand on formalities, Furihata-kun,” Akashi says. “Just Akashi will do. And think nothing of it: I told you, did I not? I always have time for my friends.”

“Right, er,” Furihata stumbles, “thanks anyway.”

“You are welcome.” Akashi clears his throat. “If that’s all, I need to be going now. I wish you a good evening.”

“Yes, good evening,” Furihata says, mechanically. The phone beeps. Akashi’s hung up. Furihata stares down at the screen with its _Call Ended_ for a frozen, extended moment. _Did that just happen?_ His trigonometry homework, completed with a clarity and lack of crossing-out that speak of Akashi moving through him, like a possession or a ghost, suggest that it just did.

Furihata lays his phone face down on his desk and throws himself flat on his back onto his bed. The blanket, fluffed and light, flattens underneath him. Fabric clouds obscure his peripheral vision, leaving him free to stare blankly into space.

 _Friends_ , he thinks miserably, tracing patterns on the pattern-less ceiling with his eyes. _Yeah right_. He breathes deeply into his blankets. He’d drowning, or he’s waking up, he can’t decide. Spending time with Akashi is like drinking too much: his head is still fuzzy. It’s like toeing the line between pleasantly buzzed and absolutely wasted – he can’t decide whether the feeling is a nice one or not, just that it’s intense, and heavy like a blanket of stone.

His pride stings. That’s what it is, he recognises. His pride is stinging, even as the old awe only grows stronger. Furihata’s never been in much of a position to cultivate much personal pride – but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any. And that doesn’t mean it doesn’t smart, to have someone else effortlessly, coldly, sweep away all his problems and ask without blinking: _was that all?_

Still, Furihata’s not _blind_. So Akashi feels like wasting some time on Furihata, maybe for his own nefarious purposes, maybe just for shits and giggles. That’s fine by Furihata. After all, how many people can say that _Akashi Seijuurou_ wasted an hour on their life, explaining trigonometry problems to them?

It’s not as if he’s not getting anything out of it.

Akashi hangs up, nonplussed and vaguely dissatisfied. While not a failure – Akashi has never failed, not really – the success was incomplete and imperfect. He had gained an acquaintance, perhaps even a lackey, but far from a friend. He _had_ , on reflection, always been better with the first two categories than the last.

Partial victory is even more frustrating than total defeat. It reminds him, unbidden and unwanted, of other partial successes that had revealed themselves to be rotting away from the within the whole time. The perfect victory of Teikou, burnished to an inhuman sheen of gold. Beneath, fractures already opening.

Nonetheless, he boxes these emotions away for later perusal and opens up the online shogi page. Midorima is already waiting for him. As soon as he logs in, and the page loads, the chatbox pings with a simple message, perfectly capitalized and punctuated. Its familiarly neurotic, like returning to a native language after many years abroad.

_You’re late._

Just like Midorima, Akashi thinks fondly. He can almost see him, pushing his glasses up with his taped fingers, eyes averted in a parody of a blushing maiden. Midorima has changed in many ways, but Akashi is gratified to find that he still knows him in most of the ways that matter.

 _My apologies_ , he types back, _I was held up_. _Shall we begin?_

There’s a pause. _When you’re ready, Akashi._

The distance affects things. The atmosphere isn’t quite complete without the physical board between them, seeing the wrinkle between Midorima’s brow, exchanging politely-worded barbs over the clack of pieces set in place. It’s one of the things (the few things) that Akashi misses about the past: the closeness, the inevitable victory, the strength.

Midorima fights well. His improvement has always been a steady incline, predictable but unstoppable. There’s nothing new to how he plays; it’s like drinking old, fermented black tea, or wine aged for many years in an oak barrel. There’s no sharpness, that dagger-edge that had always belonged to Aomine, and Kise now, as well. It’s steady, like the hoofbeats of a horse. Akashi might have been arrogant enough, once upon a time, to let his mind drift during one of these games. He is more sensible now. Being absolute means taking the necessary precautions against even the smallest chance of defeat. He is all-seeing, but to be all-conquering is not necessarily an automatic offshoot of that. Akashi simply knows his threats better than anyone else.

Pieces fall into place. Battles wage, soundless and over great distances, across an invisible field. Smoke rises, unseen. Soldiers fall, horses scream, kingdoms go up in flames. Between them, unseen in the electrical wires, pulsates an entire history that lives and dies in every game they play.

Akashi wins, as always.

 _Good game_ , he types. It’s not as much of a lie as it used to be. Midorima _has_ gotten better. Perhaps more importantly, Akashi has learnt how to recognise that fact.

 _One day_ , Midorima types back _, I will beat you_.

Not today, Akashi doesn’t say. It’s hard to believe, that he could lose. Kuroko will just have to forgive him for that – Akashi, after all, has been taught through experimental evidence that losing is not in his nature.

 _I look forward to it_ , he responds. Midorima must understand the perfunctory tone of the message, because next thing he knows, Akashi’s opponent has logged off – probably, Akashi surmises, with a small, almost invisible smile, in a huff.

His phone pings, and he almost starts. He looks down, surprised. It’s Furihata’s daily goodnight, this time with an addendum of _thanks for all your help!_ Is it so late already? He looks at the time: 11:45 p.m. Later than he expected. The game with Midorima had gone on for longer, and it seemed he himself had played harder and been more engrossed in it, than he had anticipated.

He frowns, all the simmering discontent that he had put away for the duration of the game coming back. Things with Furihata are not where he had expected them to be. To be sure, he is responding to Akashi’s overtures – Akashi has it on good authority that his overtures strongly encourage response – but in such a way that Akashi feels he has stepped no closer to his goal.

To Furihata, Akashi is still an intimidating presence. There is nothing of comfort or relaxation in their interactions, although there is now plenty of awed admiration that borders, and occasionally crosses over into fearful. It grates at Akashi. It reminds him of Teikou, all the parts that he had most disliked. Teikou, an arena of his failures, perceived clearly now with the aid of hindsight. He’d entered Teikou determined to carve out a space for himself, by himself, a monument to a better future, and left empty-handed, in his father’s limousine, headed for Kyoto with the admiring masses and the bitter ex-friends scattered like so much dust before the wind.

He cannot help feeling disappointed, an emotion he identifies as arising from Furihata’s recalcitrance. It’s a rare display of contradiction from himself that makes him frown. Had he not chosen Furihata for precisely that reason? He had picked the hardest battle to fight, assured in Furihata’s cowardice, had he not?

Akashi has no tolerance for failure, especially not in difficult battles. Perhaps he has underestimated – or overestimated – Furihata. Perhaps he had extrapolated too far from Furihata’s association with Kuroko, and thought him imbued with that same quality of irreverence which both Kuroko and his newfound team seem to possess in grand doses. He had not expected to have such trouble establishing a relationship of equals with one of _Kuroko’s_ company, Kuroko, whose defining trait was an absolute refusal to accept any condemnation of himself as _lesser_.

He will have to reassess. Perhaps, subconsciously, he had led himself to believe that all of Kuroko’s compatriots were as extraordinary as he himself had ultimately proved to be. It’s an oversight on his part, an inaccurate presumption on the strength of Furihata’s character.

 _Goodnight, Furihata_ he responds. And for good measure, he adds, _I’m always free to help or just to talk, think nothing of it._


	5. Chapter 5

_Free to help_ , Furihata thinks morosely _, or just to talk_. _Am I reading too much into this?_

He stares at himself in the mirror, and recoils at the timid neutrality that stares back at him. He brushes his fringe out of the way and makes a face at himself. Then he sighs. In aggression or passivity, he finds himself equally uninteresting.

Banging on the door. “Oi, Kou, hurry up!” His brother shouts from the other side. Furihata makes another face, decidedly less stilted, and responds with a noise that signifies disgruntled concord through the toothpaste foam filling his mouth. There’s not much time left to ruminate after that, rushed as he is in a whirlwind out the bathroom, to the breakfast table, then onto the bus where Fukuda plops down next to him on the second stop and they start testing each other for the English quiz right before lunch.

It’s only after the teacher has collected all the papers that Furihata breathes out a sigh of relief. English isn’t his best subject, but it’s not his worst either – he’s confident that he’ll land somewhere about average and he’s happy with that. He throws the test out of his head and turns to Fukuda.

Fukuda stares back with large, mournful eyes.

Furihata quickly wipes the smile off his face, exchanging it for an expression of sympathetic commiseration. It’s too late, though, Fukuda groans and slaps a hand over his eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbles through the flesh of his palm. “Not a word.”

Furihata snorts, quickly stifles the snort when Fukuda glares through a crack in his fingers, and nods in a parody of seriousness. He mimes zipping his lips shut. “Talk about what?” he asks.

Fukuda cracks up. “Laying it on thick much?” He shakes his head, and shakes off the black mood with it. If Furihata were to guess, he’d place it as equal parts real carefreeness and calculated denial. He doesn’t really have time to be gratified by the correctness of the observation, though, as Fukuda turns almost immediately to him and in a clear bid to change the subject, goes, “hey, how’s it going with Akashi?”

Furihata’s smile stretches once more across his face, almost by instinct, like a string of putty.

Fukuda recoils.

“Uh,” he says, leaning forward once more, interest and sympathy sparking in his eyes as he chooses to turn his attention from his own to Furihata’s misery, “is it…is it that bad?”

His toothpaste reflections return with a rush of peppermint to replace the vacuum of irregular English verb conjugations. Something must happen on his face because Fukuda’s look of concern only grows deeper, and finally shifts to seriousness. He sits up straight from the languid sprawl he’d fallen into.

Furihata feels unfairly trapped, and scratches the back of his head as he searches for words. Alleviating Fukuda’s concern would be easiest, but to be honest Furihata feels that managing Akashi requires a group effort. Certainly, guessing at the shadows Akashi casts is proving to be too much for his efforts alone.

He relates everything that’s happened, the study session, Akashi’s final comment. It sounds inconsequential and petty once he says it out loud, and takes far less time than it seemed to in his head. He’s almost disappointed at the lack of gravitas it commands. Shared with Fukuda, the amount of time he’s spent agonising over those few sentences, few seconds, becomes absurd and the moment the last word’s left his lips he regrets sharing it at all. _Akashi helped me study and I’m having a breakdown about it_. He doesn’t want to be pitied, but does he have the right to ask someone so far superior to spare his dignity?

There’s nothing he can give to Akashi that’s worth anything, but Furihata has his pride too.

Fukuda listens patiently, nodding occasionally. He otherwise remains silent, letting Furihata talk at increasingly faster speeds. _Mister dependable,_ Furihata thinks, perhaps a little uncharitably.

Fukuda says, out of the blue, once Furihata is done: “Akashi reminds of the first girl who fell in love with me.”

“What the fuck,” Furihata replies, shocked into swearing. Kawashima on a neighbouring desk turns sharply, her bob cutting a thin line through the air, and directs an even sharper glare in their direction as she clears her throat loudly. Furihata winces, and puts on his best, sheepish, apologetic smile.

Mollified, she goes back to talking with her friends.

Furihata pulls a face, before bending his head closer to Fukuda and saying again, in a quieter tone that he’s sure Kawashima won’t hear, “What the _fuck_ , Fukuda?”

Then the actual contents of the sentence catch up to him. “Wait, the first girl who _fell in love_ with you? There’s more than one?”

Fukuda frowns. “We _are_ young and fit members of the basketball club,” he points out, with some asperity. Furihata gapes at the casual way he says it. “You get as many Valentines’ chocolates as I do.”

Furihata splutters. That doesn’t count, he wants to say. I haven’t even met some of those girls. Whatever they’re looking for, it’s not me. Then he looks up at Fukuda, who’s got a sort of faraway, nostalgic, bitter look on his face, and shuts up.

To be honest, he thinks Kuroko’s indoctrinated them a bit. Every time he sees that look, although never before on Fukuda’s face, he knows it’s story time, and it’s probably not going to be fun. It’s strange, how he’s never considered that Fukuda might have some sort of story behind him as well. Stories seem reserved for people like Kagami – came back from America, met the partner of his dreams, roaring victory to reach the summit – or people like Kuroko – catastrophic middle school event, scattered friends, winning them all back like some fairytale quest. People like Furihata and Fukuda just pop out of the aether with their normal, average lives in hand, and no one ever asks them a second word about their own humble trajectories, the banal misfortunes of their uneventful pasts.

Fukuda doesn’t catch onto Furihata’s musings, speaking almost to himself. “Ah, but this was before that. It was, um, middle school. She was one of the popular girls, but she was really smart as well. She was always top ten in our school, and she had this massive gaggle of friends – sort of like Kise, actually, but like, with brains. Always surrounded by fangirls. And she would wear the newest fashions as soon as they came out, and jewellery with her uniform, but none of the teachers scolded her, because everyone loved her. Way out of my league, in any case.”

Fukuda laughs, a little self-deprecatingly. The sound makes Furihata wince for its familiarity. He thinks he knows where Fukuda is going with this story. It’s not something Furihata’s ever experienced – no girl’s ever claimed to be in love with _him_ , he thinks sourly – but he’s got more experience than anyone on what it’s like being in the shadow of the extraordinary. The rejection, the one he tries not to think about, and has almost succeeded in forgetting, flashes briefly through his mind.

_Honestly, Furihata-kun, I just don’t like you. And in any case, I wouldn’t want a man who’s only good at something to impress someone else._

Unbidden, Furihata’s mouth twists into a decidedly unattractive frown. Somehow, he can’t help but feel slighted, and the slighting has lingered far longer than the attraction, which died the moment his confession left his lips. He can safely say that all the more tender thoughts of her have died appropriate deaths, but the feeling of offended inadequacy remains.

“I couldn’t figure out at first,” Fukuda says. His voice breaks Furihata out of his own unhappy memories to what, judging by the look of Fukuda’s face, aren’t the best memories either. “what in the world she was doing hanging out with a guy like _me_. And it wasn’t even like they were fun meetings. She’d come to sit at my table in the library, and we’d study together, and she’d point out all the ways I was doing my questions wrong. You couldn’t even mad at her! She had that sort of earnest superiority, that sort of way with words that made _you_ feel bad for needing to be helped. She’d come find me after school, and we’d get cheap food from the local convenience store, but I could tell she hated the taste. Everything was a mismatch, and at the end of it, I resented myself for not meeting her standards.”

Furihata interrupts at this point. The words are becoming unbearable, and he can’t tell whether the question that he poses is genuine or a directionless attempt to strike through to the heart of what, at least, plagues Furihata. “The way you say it,” he points out, “makes it sound like you were in love with _her_ , and not the other way around.”

An expression crosses Fukuda’s face then, that Furihata had never seen before. It’s a haughty, sympathetic sort of look, directed at someone unseen. It twists Fukuda’s face, open and helpful, into something more condescending. It’s an incredibly sad sort of face to make.

“No,” he says firmly, “I never loved her. I might have liked her at first, but that was before I got to know her. She was an exceptionally lonely person, you see. But she was very proud as well, and beneath all her charming likeability, she both longed for and hated the thought of a relationship between equals. That was why she found me out. I was so far below her she could pretend that we were close friends, and I’d be too scared to take advantage or boast.”

Furihata blinks, unsure what to say. This is...not what he had expected. The light slanting in through the open window seems suddenly very melancholy, and Fukuda’s face, illuminated beneath it, as inscrutable as the blank and ominous face of the moon.

“That speaks to the strength of your character as well,” he decides upon at last. “She thought you were trustworthy enough to befriend.”

“That’s not a sort of strength I want to be associated with,” Fukuda says, suddenly sharp. He pauses, then takes a breath. “Sorry. Lost myself for a bit there. Anyway, she’d tell me all sorts of things that she told no one else. I never knew what to say, and at first I’d feel guilty about it, but after a while, I stopped caring. I realised that I didn’t actually need to say anything. She needed a bin to put her garbage in, that was all. And I was happy to help her, once I figured out how necessary I was to her. She needed me far more than I needed her – “ Fukuda nods decisively to himself. “I could have lived with a few more bad grades. She might not have lived without somewhere to put all that stuff. Anyone could have done the trick, I’m sure, but once I figured that out, it became a lot easier. I knew I was helping her, after that. Anyway, she confessed to me at the end of middle school and I rejected her.”

Fukuda gives himself a great shake, and a stretch. Furihata stares at him, feeling like he should say something, but lost as to where to begin.

“I’m sorry,” he settles for. What he’s sorry for, he can’t really name either. Akashi’s existence, perhaps? The fact that he’s somehow tangled himself up with this personality that bears striking, if unfortunate resemblance, to Fukuda’s…something? “I didn’t know.”

“Don’t apologise,” Fukuda laughs with a wave of his hand. “I could never have liked her after all that. But her eyes remind me of Akashi. Obviously, take what I’m saying with a massive grain of salt – but have you considered that he’s lonely, and too proud to do what normal people do when they’re lonely?”

“Kuroko says Akashi doesn’t make friends without purpose,” Furihata responds, before realising that the two statements don’t actually contradict. He falls into silence. Some sort of ballooning pressure is pushing against his ribcage and making it hard to breathe. He feels, for some reason, deeply offended and gratified at the same time.

Fukuda shrugs, tipping back so that he’s balancing on the hind two legs of his chair. “It’s your text-message relationship,” he says, “not his.”

Then he clatters back to the ground in a rush of air, leaning forward onto his elbows in one fluid shift of weight. “Just take some photos for me and Kawahara,” he says with a wink as his hair flops into his eyes. “Oooh, get an autograph too. Maybe he has basketball tips!”

“Shameless,” Furihata sighs, affectedly. He pretends to hide his face, but welcomes the chance to laugh. He recognises that Fukuda is trying to distract him, and he appreciates it, even though his morose mood doesn’t dissipate until after-school basketball practice, when sweat and the ache of his muscles push all other thoughts out of his head. It’s hard to be distracted on the same court as Kuroko and Kagami, one a vacuum, the other a bonfire. Even Furihata feels elevated, brought up to another height, by their shared intensity. He gives all he can on the court and on the bench, always, driven by Kuroko’s fearsome belief. Furihata can only repay that sort of faith with absolute, total concentration, that leaves no thought for even Akashi’s overbearing, shadowy presence.

It niggles at him though, afterwards. When he’s in the gym, changing out of his sweaty shirt. He’s too much of a coward to catch Kuroko again: it’s not like he wants Akashi to become a common topic of conversation between them. Kawahara approaches him with sparkling eyes, but Fukuda must see something in Furihata’s distraction, and successfully guides Kawahara away so Furihata can escape without the usual Akashi-related inquiries.

It’s earlier than usual by the time he’s walking home. The Interhigh is still some time away, the new freshmen haven’t come in yet, and all in all it’s the sedate off-season where even Coach’s best efforts can only do so much to lift motivation. It’s bright enough that the sky is a dark blue instead of a stately black, and he can see the red streaks on his sneakers, muted in the growing shadow, as they tread lightly over the pavement, where grass is starting to take tenacious hold in the cracks as a portent of the oncoming spring. The streetlights have just started to blink on, casting yellowed light on the underside of the bulging cherry blossom buds, hanging fat and pregnant on the branches of the sakura trees that dot almost every street.

He’s always envisioned it as Akashi condescending inexplicably to a relationship with no value to him, with Furihata filling the pitiable role of the one condescended to, the parasite who’s nature allows only for taking. What if it’s the other way around?

He stops beneath streetlight that flickers on above him to reveal a cat chasing a raven into a garbage can. The raven’s caw is cut into a dying gurgle, and the cat mewls in satisfaction. Furihata looks in the direction of these creatures of the gutter with indescribable pity. Today, the raven dies so the cat will not starve. Tomorrow, the cat might be hit by a car. There’s no longevity here, only survival by the necessary means.

It’s a heady thought, that in the gutter is where Akashi is as well. It is intoxicating, inviting. He’d been content to admire Akashi from below. The idea of pitying him from above is indescribable, impossible, as terrifying as it is wonderful. His ordinariness seems, for the first time, a boon. Who is Furihata to have this? And yet, he thinks, taking his phone out of his pocket, here it is anyway.

 _Thanks for the offer haha_ , he types back. _You can tell me anything as well!_


	6. Chapter 6

Furihata’s response catches Akashi by surprise with its forwardness. After the lingering awkwardness of the last meeting, Akashi had been fully expectant of Furihata’s retreat, and had been gearing himself to corner Furihata socially. He had not expected to find himself pursued, to find the initiative taken from him. It gives Akashi pause, and causes him to reflect once more. The development is pleasing, and lays some of his fears from before to rest. Furihata may not be extraordinary, but perhaps he is mind-numbingly common either.

He congratulates himself. His lack of success, it seems, was a fleeting misapprehension born from the plague of self-doubt that Kuroko had instilled in him, and has proven to be mistaken.

He is still victorious, even against himself. Furihata is, at the very least, not immobilised by his apparent terror, as he was at Kuroko’s party. It’s progress, almost surprisingly so.

 _Thank you Furihata-kun_ , he types back, _that’s very kind of you_.

It’s an offer he will take up. It would hugely remiss of him to miss the opportunity to return Furihata’s unexpected amiability. Akashi will always seek the surest path to winning. Nothing is sacred, not his parents and not himself. The easiest path to equality, he is sure, is lowering one’s self. Furihata is far, far below him, so Akashi has a long way to descend. He will concede first, lose the battle and win the long war.

 _I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about me_. _Let’s get to know each other. Ask me anything you want – I’m sure what you’ve heard from Kuroko has left you with a lot of questions._

He pauses. Is putting Kuroko in too much of a stretch? But realistically, it’s the only tie that isn’t ephemeral between them. Not acknowledging it would be more glaring that stating it outright.

He decides, and hits send.

He wonders, with a sense of something wavering between foreboding and anticipation, what Furihata will ask.

The first thing Furihata notes about Akashi’s response is that none of it probes back at Furihata. It’s a point in favour of Fukuda’s theory. Akashi is offering to talk about himself – the only logic behind such an offer is that Akashi _wants_ to talk about himself, and has yet to find a willing, safe outlet of persuasive passivity. Akashi doesn’t actually want anything to do with _Furihata_ , per say. It makes him breathe a sigh of relief in the same moment that it lights a fire of roiling offense in his stomach. He’s slighted, certainly, but also vindicated.

 _Haha_ , _Kuroko hasn’t said much_ , he says, in lieu of taking up Akashi’s invitation. _Let’s get to know each other_ stares out of the screen, affronting, precious. It’s one-way, of course. Furihata knows better than to _presume_. But even that is enough to get his hands shaking, his blood pumping like in a game. Isn’t this another game, in the end? It might even be, Furihata thinks with a thrill of exhilaration, one that he can win.

 _How did you get into basketball?_ He settles on. That’s safe, right? It’s the sort of question that always goes into ice-breakers, oh, how did you get into this?

A brief pause ensues. During that pause, Furihata feels as if he has died and is now being buried, entered behind a huge, black stone.

 _My mother taught me_ , comes the answer, at last. Furihata lets out a long, deep breath, and comes back from the grave, mouth open, to tell them all –

That’s a standard answer. Lots of parents play sports with their children. Furihata’s own basketball journey started with his brother in the deserted, weed-infested courts of the nearest park to their old home, an on-and-off interest that had only really taken off in high school. He wonders, now, what it would have been like if he had fallen in love then and there. If starting five years, ten years earlier would mean that he could reach even the feet of the giants that tower over him now.

Probably not, he thinks with a smile. He sees Kiyoshi-senpai, dangling from Murasakibara’s grip, and shivers. All the Generation of Miracles are so cold, as if they were made of frost and starlight. Akashi most of all – the cruellest of all of them, but the best as well.

People say Aomine is the best, but Aomine, who laughs like a panther, all teeth and fury on the court, is nothing compared to the pale, unrelenting shadow of Akashi’s oracular stateliness. Aomine moves through the world like a flash – but Furihata has seen people move through the world easily before. Kagami. Kuroko, sometimes. Akashi is the first person he’s seen who moves the world around _him._ Furihata doesn’t know anyone who plays basketball like Akashi, and thinks he would be disappointed if he found out that Akashi wasn’t a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience that only he and a few other privileged people were able to share.

 _Your mother must be an amazing basketball player to teach you!_ He types back.

 _My mother died when I was ten_ , comes the answer, remarkably swiftly.

It stares out at him, blank and devoid of meaning. ‘My mother’, it says, and unbidden Furihata’s mind flashes to his own mother, getting on into her fifties, hair in curls and pushing her reading glasses up her nose. ‘Dead’, it says, and Furihata thinks of an untameable, unknowable, void. Insidious darkness, incomprehensible. The two clash, at odds.

Furihata is struck dumb for a second. What does someone even say to that? This isn’t the sort of information you share to just anyone. It’s the sort of thing you only tell your closest friends, the sort of thing you keep close to your chest like a heavy weight.

It’s the sort of thing that people are always looking for ways to get out, but are never willing to let go of. Something you would only ever say to your soulmate – or to a stranger who didn’t matter in the long run.

Furihata sends a silent thank you to Fukuda.

 _I’m sorry_ , he replies, confident now in his role. _I have no idea what that must have felt like._

 _Most people don’t,_ comes the response, short and terse. Then, like a cat sprawling languidly after having scratched someone and now demanding affection from its prior victim, _it would be more surprising, and more worrisome, if it were a common experience._

Furihata, unsure whether the appropriate response is laughter to the morbid humour or further condolences, chooses to wait. The short silence that follows is one of the most uncomfortable in his life, which is remarkable considering the entire conversation has been conducted in silent words that he only now realises he has been attributing a voice to.

 _In any case_ , Akashi types when Furihata has moved from the pooling light of one streetlamp to the next, _I continued pursuing it well after her death._

Furihata thinks of the fervency with which Akashi approaches basketball, the breathlessness of the court, his face in the last few minutes of the game. Like a candle melting, it’s flame dying in a gasp of collapsing beauty. He thinks of going against all of that, at the start, and feeling like he would die right there in the middle of the game – even though it was just a game, Furihata had been convinced it was his own life that he was fighting for.

He thinks of kings, crowned and uncrowned, and emperors. Shuutoku and Rakuzan. He thinks of Akashi’s eyes, gold and red, blown wide in cold, focused arrogance, then both become brilliant crimson, narrowed into fiery, polished intensity.

Then he remembers, _Seirin won_. Something irrepressible, gleeful and full of teeth hammers in his chest, ticking like a clock, ringing like a church bell sounding the prayers of the sinners.

 _She must have been very important to you_ , Furihata types. Basketball feels like the only part of Akashi that’s actually alive. It’s sort of ironic that it’s linked so closely to a dead woman.

 _She was_ , Akashi replies. Furihata waits under the streetlight, until the cold starts to bite at his skin, but nothing else comes. The silence has stretched for so long that any attempt to resuscitate the conversation would be forced. He pockets his phone and shoulders his bag.

He looks up and almost screams.

There, just beyond the outer edge of the ring of light, a pair of glowing eyes stare back at him. He stumbles back, into darkness, then jerks forward back into the brightest part of the streetlight’s circle. His eyes adjust to the shadows – he hadn’t realised how bright Akashi’s words on his screen had been until he’d looked up and realised they had made the world into a flat, blank wall for him. Away from Akashi, the night takes on dimension once more, illuminating the thing sitting there, patiently watching him.

It’s a cat. It’s the same cat. The one that chased the raven. Furihata’s stillness seems to encourage it: it yowls and dips its nose into the light. Furihata thinks it’s got black patterns at first, but then he takes a closer look and realises it’s blood, dried around its muzzle. He feels a thrum of disgust.

Its eyes, bright and dark like an inverted full moon, stare at him warily.

Furihata bends down and clicks his tongue. The cat steps a little closer, revealing the torn remnants of a collar circling its neck. It’s as he thought. This is a cat that knows its way around humans, although judging from its shyness it hasn’t been around one for a while.

Furihata clicks his tongue again. The cat inches into the light. It’s a pitiful sight. Its fur is ragged, torn in patches. This close, it smells of garbage tips that it has undoubtedly trawled through. There is blood around its mouth, and when it opens its mouth in a yawn, pink threads are caught in its sharp, red-stained teeth.

Furihata feels suddenly very sorry for it. He steps closer, but the cat’s fur bristles. At this moment, a siren wails by in the distance and the spell is broken. The cat backs up onto its haunches, spitting and hissing, and before Furihata can decide if it is worth chasing, it has disappeared into one of the alleyways curling off the street.

Furihata stands there for a while, before shrugging his shoulders. He bumps his backpack up and hurries the rest of the way home, so he won’t be scolded for being late for dinner. There are more important things in the world, after all, than stray cats.

Akashi curls his legs beneath him, blankets tucked in a loose spiral up to his chest. It’s the middle of a cold freeze in an already cool spring in Kyoto, and the heater, even in overdrive, can’t seem to remove the chill in the air. His homework sits in a completed stack on his desk, the forms due to the student council another stack next to it. The last of the applications for basketball club manager, necessary after Shouta Higuchi’s graduation, blur before his eyes. He rubs them, and rejects another application as unsatisfactory with a quick mark of his pen.

Today, he thinks, putting the paper into a towering pile with its fellows, was a resounding success.

Furihata, after the first hiccup of surprise, had acted perfectly predictably. The emotional spectrum Akashi had seen from him in that one conversation was enough to dwarf what he had gotten over the past month. It had not been comfortable, or perhaps particularly friendly, but it had served nicely to shatter the ice that had so persistently come between them.

His father is right on some matters, in the end. The fastest way to get an enemy to fall for a trap is to expose your own vulnerabilities as the bait. Furihata’s not an enemy, and Akashi would not go so far as to say he’s laying a _trap_ , but the logic hold all the same.

 _Predictable_ , he thinks. Nothing could be more tiresome than the crowd, probing at every inch of skin for the soft underbelly they were sure he possessed. Nothing held more enticement for the commoner than the opportunity to debase those who held themselves superior. Akashi recognises this. He understands it.

Furihata is, at the end of the day, exceptionally common. Akashi knows what he has to do. He has more tragedy than the average person, he thinks, to act as the candy house for the lost, wandering child.

He stretches out his legs, then leans over to touch the tips of socked feet. His hamstrings strain, pulled to their limit. It’s a satisfying sort of pain. He presses his head to his knees until the burn crosses the line of unbearable, then sits back up.

The other, Akashi thinks, stretching his arms above his head, would never condescend to the masses. The other had always held intimidation as his closest and favourite tool. The other, so brittle, so fragile. Too afraid to let anyone else know he was afraid. Too afraid to let even himself know.

Pathetic.

Akashi isn’t going to be like that. He won’t tolerate resistance, not from his parents, and not from himself. He’s going to be better. He’s going to be stronger, and to prove that, he’s going to be weaker than the other ever dared.

The other would have been content to have Furihata fear him. Akashi will make Furihata _love_ him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm unsure about this chapter - well, about the premise of this fic in general, but especially this chapter. On another note, I've started full-time work, so my updates will be coming a lot slower and be probably of a lower quality as well.


	7. Chapter 7

“He keeps looking at his phone and _smiling_ ,” Hayama says with an exaggerated shiver. The emphasis would be undeserved, because Akashi’s smiles have become a lot less manic and a lot more frequent, except Mibuchi knows _exactly_ what Hayama is trying to convey – on anyone else, he would call it _not pretty_ , but it’s hard to say something so blatantly untrue about Akashi. “Reo-nee, do something!”

“Everyone on the team deserves the right to conduct their private relationships privately,” Mibuchi maintains stubbornly. “Besides, Sei-chan’s the captain! He’s not doing anything wrong – “

“Apart from being absolutely terrifying,” Hayama mutters under his breath. It’s Hayama’s version of under his breath, so it’s just normal volume for everyone else.

“ _He’s not doing anything wrong_ ,” Mibuchi repeats for emphasis. “If you want to launch a complaint about Akashi’s _smile_ of all things, you can talk to the coach.”

They think of complaining about Akashi to the coach, and grimace as one. The thought is so out of the realm of the possibility it almost becomes farce.

“Still,” Hayama whines. “It’s so _distracting_. His face does this thing, and it’s like, he’s looking at a piglet he’s raised that’s almost of slaughtering age – “

“What an incredibly complex metaphor,” Mibuchi says, “maybe save those brain cells for English class and you’ll get a mark higher than 70.”

“Reo-nee!”

Mibuchi sighs affectedly and turns away with an artful flick of his hair before Hayama’s puffed-out cheeks can make him laugh. He turns just in time to see Nebuya’s surprisingly thoughtful face, and groans. “Not you too.”

“I agree with Hayama,” Nebuya states in his rumbling voice. “While I don’t think we should or have the right to intervene, it’s very strange.”

Mibuchi privately agrees with them as well, but feels that as the self-proclaimed mature one in the team, he should probably uphold the rule of law and defend Akashi from such unjust, baseless attacks against his person. So what if Akashi’s never had such a vibrant social life before? So what if Mibuchi is just as curious as the other Uncrowned Kings as to who could have the nerves of steel to text _Akashi Seijuurou_? So what is Hayama’s metaphor is surprisingly apt, and Akashi always smiles down at his phone with a combination of intense anticipation and wistful sadness that separately, might have been poetic, but combined becomes terrifying instead?

“We should leave Sei-chan alone!” he affirms again for emphasis. Hayama groans and flops dramatically down onto the carpet – the carpet of _Reo’s_ dorm, which the other two have so ungraciously invaded. Honestly, no respect for anything a maiden might want to keep secret from the prying eyes of vulgar men! Nebuya, more circumspectly, looks incredibly doubtful about the wisdom of the plan.

“But still!” Hayama bounces into a seated position. Hayama, Mibuchi thinks, doesn’t so much shift and move as he does bounce from moment to moment. It’s exhausting just to look at. “Can’t we at least find out who it is? I mean, Akashi never looks at any of _us_ like that.”

“Yes,” Mibuchi snaps, bitterly, “and I’m sure that’s a blessing for every shrine visit we’ve ever done. You were making slaughterhouse metaphors just then, do you want him to look at you like a butcher?”

“Well,” Hayama splutters. Mibuchi _had_ been unfair, but he’s unrepentant about it now, crossing his arms and leaning back, stung with the truth of Hayama’s statement. It’s galling, that Akashi would rather check his phone for infrequent texts every moment of the day and not say a single word to any of them instead. “It’s just – “

Nebuya leans back on his elbows and lets a long, loud burp rip into the air. Mibuchi freezes, face going white, then red, then redder, reaching incandescence.

‘I too,” Nebuya says in far too reasonable a tone of voice for someone who’s proven himself uncivilised to the extreme, “would like to know who Akashi’s friend is. It’s not someone at Rakuzan, for sure. Maybe one of the Miracles?”

“You beast,” Mibuchi shrieks, face now a shade of unflattering purple, pointing a shaking finger at him while his other hand comes to flap futilely at the defiled air. “You – get out of my room! Who let you in in the first place?”

“Huh?” Hayama tilts his head up at him. His eyes sparkle, irritatingly. “You did, Reo-nee! I knocked and everything. You said you were busy but then I said we wanted to talk about Akashi and you said – woah, wait, wait!”

Mibuchi lifts Hayama by the scruff of his collar with both hands. “Invitation rescinded,” he enunciates clearly through gritted teeth. “Kindly leave my room.”

“ _Reo-nee!_ ”

It’s too late. Mibuchi deposits him – gently – at the threshold of the door, then turns back around to roundly kick Nebuya in the leg with a socked foot. His toes jar and he winces. Nebuya, damn him, doesn’t even flinch.

“You too,” Mibuchi scowls down at him as he discreetly rubs his foot against the cool timber floor until the sting dissipates. “Go take your burps and farts somewhere else.”

Nebuya arches an eyebrow, standing in a ripple of muscle that leaves Mibuchi’s mouth just a little dry, holding up his hands in the universal signal of surrender.

“Alright, alright, I’m going.” But at the doorway, where Hayama is already bouncing on his toes, he turns back around. “Aren’t you curious at all, Reo?”

Hayama too, turns wide, sharp eyes on him, that for a moment aren’t sparkling at all. For a moment, they’re on the courts of the stadium, losing behind the man they had lost to for three years, the man they had entrusted victory to in the knowledge of their own defeat. Learning the bitter taste of it all over again, and riding the long hours from Tokyo back to Kyoto in a disgrace that felt so gentle, like a blanket of snow. As if losing had set them free, somehow, or at least set Akashi free, and all those tethered to him had come apart as well in a tangle of untied knots. Hadn’t it been peaceful, to sit there, completely blank, watching the trees go by on the long march home?

Mibuchi had thought so, watching Akashi smile, small and secret to himself as they rode up and up into the spiralling mountains. It was a smile not like the other smiles. Mibuchi felt he could get close, and not bleed for it.

_Aren’t you worried?_

“Sei-chan’s not doing anything wrong,” Mibuchi says again, insistent. “It’s none of our business, anyway, who he’s friends with. Stop being nosy!”

He walks up the door and shuts it with a firm click.

As soon as the new first years leave, chatting and laughing, a mob of painfully nervous energy, Kawahara flops down on the bench and sighs.

“I’m beat,” he says, to universal grunts of agreement. He casts plaintive eyes at Hyuuga. “Were we ever like that?”

Hyuuga smiles, rather demonically, and sighs in reminiscence. “You,” he indicates with a sweep of his hand that stops pointedly before Kagami and Kuroko, “were worse. There’s just more – how many applicants were there, Izuki?”

Izuki towels off his neck and chest and slips a shirt on. “Enough for a fanclub,” he says, muffled through the cotton of his collar. His head pops out, a flourish of black. “Because they’re our fans. Get it?”

Hyuuga lunges for him with a strangled roar. No one tries to stop him, although Mitobe makes some concerned hand movements that Koganei promptly calms with an impish smile. For a moment, everything is frenetic chaos, as it’s always been. It’s like first year all over again, except not. Kawahara looks at Hyuuga, yelling in the stuffy air of the locker room, and thinks he has so far to go before he can be a fraction of what these people have been to him.

“Well,” Hyuuga says, Izuki dangling with a hapless smile from his hands, “they’re your underclassmen now.” He casts a narrow, sharp glance around the room. Izuki might be the eagle on the court, but Hyuuga’s eyes are no less sharp off of it. “They might be first year brats, but they’re part of the team, got it?”

A ragged chorus of agreements sounds out from all corners of the room. No one needs an explanation for what that means. Kawahara shrinks a little, ashamed at having complained in the first place.

Furihata’s phone goes off. Before, Kawahara might have been excited. Nowadays, even the electronic presence of Akashi Seijuurou can prompt only a turn of the head, an arch of the brow. “Again?”

Furihata, as always, lights up. Like a Christmas tree plugged into electricity, Kawahara thinks, not without some sourness. “Sorry guys,” he says, to a chorus of hand-waving and ‘we get it, we get it’. Then he’s gone, head down, lips upturned, spirited away into the world that Kawahara has never belonged to, and thought Furihata never would.

Slowly, the senpais disperse. They’re in their third year, now, and even the most dedicated to basketball need to set some of that unflinching energy aside for university applications, exams, study and research into the future stretching out like a blank road. It’s a heady thought, that next year they will all be gone, the coach, the senpais. Kawahara will be in their shoes again – is already in their shoes, and floundering. He curls down, unknotting a shoelace and lacing it back up, threading it through each hole slowly.

The door shuts quietly behind Tsuchida-senpai’s back, the last of the third years to leave. Kawahara ties his shoelace into a perfect, symmetrical knot, that droops lopsided as soon as he takes his hands away. He frowns.

Furihata’s phone pings again.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters, fumbling for it in his pocket. Kawahara watches him type something quickly, then slip it away. What does it feel like, he wonders, to carry the exceptional in your pocket?

“I’m gonna go first,” Furihata says, looking up. “Sorry guys.”

The rest of the second years – _second years_ – wave him off. Furihata shoots them all a smile, and leaves the same way the senpais had gone. He leaves the door open, and they watch as one as Furihata rounds the corner and disappears.

Nigou’s bark alerts them before his presence does. It’s still little warning before his head pops around the corner, mournful eyes staring up that. He lets another, sad bark, and crumples at the threshold.

“Ah,” Kuroko says, a perfectly deadpan rise in intonation. “He’s hungry. Let’s go feed him, Kagami-kun.”

Kagami chokes, but before he let out anything but a wordless splutter, Kuroko has led the two of them – and the dog – firmly out the room. He, unlike Furihata, shuts the door behind him.

Kawahara and Fukuda sit alone in a deserted room. Neither of them speak for a moment. Kawahara feels a familiar swooping in his stomach, a helplessness that Furihata had helped lift once, and victory had staved off, but is returning once again. He’d always thought, somewhere, that he and Fukuda and Furihata weren’t so much drawn to each other as they had been rejected by everyone else, and had formed a closeness of necessity rather than any true attraction.

Fukuda sits beside him. Kawahara plays with his shoelace, looking studiously down at his feet.

“Furi looks better these days,” Fukuda comments from above. “Don’t you think?”

“He plays better on the court.” Kawahara pulls at the knot of his shoelace, hoping it to get it to sit flat on his shoe. “I overheard Coach talking about putting him in more games.”

“Really?” Fukuda leans back with a thump on the bench. “That’s amazing for Furi.”

Kawahara tugs too hard on a loop and the entire knot comes apart in his hands. He stares it for a long, blank second, then abandons it and sits up suddenly.

“Do you think it’s because of Akashi?” he asks, quick and a little breathless. The words feel like a betrayal somehow. Why does Akashi have to be involved? Does Kawahara not believe Furihata can get there on his own strength? Is that it?

But Kawahara has gotten too used to Furihata being a part of their group. It’s only now that Furihata is showing signs of departing that he’s faced with the ugly reality of what their group actually is. The refuse of the basketball club. For what little they can do, it’s never enough to amount to anything.

Fukuda hums. “Probably.”

Kawahara lets that answer sit in the air. He feels a little sick with himself, over what he wants to say, what he’s now determined to say, but he forges ahead. “What do you think Akashi sees in him?”

All the unspoken assumptions crash behind that question like waves against a shore. Behind it, the deeper-rooted core of it, thrums the question, _why not me_? Kawahara grits his teeth, and can no longer hold his head up. He leans back down to fiddle with his shoelace, and forces himself to tie a simple, quick knot.

“I don’t know,” Fukuda says with a sigh. “Nothing, I think. Who knows how those minds work? Akashi’s probably in love with him.”

“Not the other way around?” Kawahara waves at the door through which Furihata has long disappeared. “Furi looks pretty enamoured as well. I know _I’d_ be over the moon if Akashi were to give me basketball tips.”

“Furi…ha.” Fukuda trails off into a laugh. “Furi looks happier, don’t you think? More confident.” Fukuda shoves his jacket into his bag and changes the subject before Kawahara can say anything. “What do you think of Akashi, Kawahara?”

“Me?” Kawahara looks up, surprised. He’d thought they had a consensus about this. “I think he’s the best basketball player I’ve ever seen, and probably the best one I’ll ever have the honour to go up against.” _All my past and future was fixed in place on that court_. _It’s the best I’ll ever be._

“Do you like him?” Fukuda asks. He turns, head cocked. Fukuda’s eyes are wide and brown and helpful. His shoulders are built to carry the burdens of other people. He has a face that screams trustworthiness.

Kawahara splutters as his face goes red, but somehow can’t find the courage to make an answer. 

Fukuda nods to himself. “Don’t worry,” he says. “From what I understand, Akashi has a lot of people who like him. That’s why I think Furi doesn’t actually like him at all.”

“What?” Kawahara asks, lost.

“I really respect Furi,” Fukuda says, “because he’s the sort of guy who’ll never throw himself into anything without thinking twice. He’s cautious, and a little reserved, but you just know that if there were ever a fire he’d be the one dragging you to the fire exit with the fire extinguisher in hand. You know? And I thought Akashi was the coolest person to ever walk the face of the planet. I mean, his gaze! They were the eyes of a man who had never needed help in his life. He was so self-contained, like a wall or a castle.”

Then Fukuda tips his head back. “But lately,” he says, eyes fixed on some blank point on the ceiling, “I’ve been starting to reconsider my opinion on both.”


	8. Chapter 8

Akashi’s regard sits light on Furihata’s shoulders. It’s not what he expected at all, to tell the truth. He’d thought it would be something like an iron blanket, or the weight of the sky. Chains, or ropes. He’d expected to struggle and chafe. Instead, it’s lighter than a feather quilt, and somehow imbues him with the ability to fly.

Once, a lifetime ago, the girl Furihata had decided would be his first love told him to be the best at something. He’d fallen in love with her for almost that reason alone. No one had ever made a demand of him so impossible before, one that he was doomed to fail, and in doing so, overcome himself. He had dedicated himself to it and her, and yes, to himself, applying himself in what meagre ways he could. He had succeeded too, in his own way. Hadn’t he stood on that court?

The trophy, displayed with pride and wonder in the gym, still seems unreal sometimes. It was Kuroko’s victory, Kagami’s victory, the senpais’ victory. Somehow, it never really felt like Furihata’s victory.

Akashi doesn’t demand the best of him – Akashi doesn’t need to. Akashi can make him the best with Furihata only barely wanting it. Can it really be this easy? He wonders sometimes.

Is this what it was like, following Akashi, being a Miracle – victory borne so lightly, almost effortlessly, by the flap of a jacket and sharp, red eyes? Winning comes into his grasp like it is born to be there, and the world slips into place like a lock newly oiled, for the first time moving with rather than grating against the key.

Weekly study sessions become a thing. Akashi makes an excellent teacher, even when he is a stranger. They never really learn how to approach each other, but they do learn how to manoeuvre around the sharp edges of the uncharted waters that is the other person. Furihata gets used to his voice, an endless stream of corrections, suggestions and explanations in his ear.

It helps that they never video call. Somehow, not seeing Akashi’s face makes everything less real, just unreal enough for Furihata to accept. He can pretend it’s his own voice, speaking out of his subconscious. Sometimes, he manages to forget Akashi is there.

Under his tuition, Furihata manages to flourish, in what little ways are within his ability. His bad subjects becomes average, and his average subjects become good. Biology, his best and only good subject, becomes something he can’t quite dare himself to call exceptional. The word is too heavy and foreign, and has never been applied to him before. His teachers shoot him surprised, appraising, looks. To him, used to the gloss of being another student in the crowd, doing neither well enough nor poorly enough to warrant attention, it’s startling at first. Soon, he accepts it as flattering.

Akashi gives him the occasional tip on basketball as well. Do these exercises, try this, try that, work on your defence, practice your sprints. It’s one of the few topics they can talk at length for – although usually it’s more of a question and answer format. Furihata would be stupid, after all, not to take advantage of the fact that Akashi is quite literally one of the best basketball players in the country, as well being far more eloquent than Kagami in explaining, observing and instructing plays. Whatever advice Furihata gets, he takes.

He’s surprised, although he almost thinks he shouldn’t be, when the advice starts to take effect.

It’s a slow process. He thinks that he’s panting far behind as usual, Kawahara and Fukuda by his side, Kuroko trailing behind. The suddenly he pauses, actually taking note, and he finds that he’s pulled ahead into the traditional no man’s land, a little behind Tsuchida, a little ahead of the rest. Kawahara’s breathing is behind him, rather than beside him. He can’t feel the heat rising from Fukuda’s skin. Kuroko’s shadow, his false weakness, dogs further behind than just at his heels.

He’s alone, improving, catching up. He grits his teeth, ignores the burning in his chest and maintains the pace. That day, he finishes his laps with a solid lead on Kawahara and Fukuda.

He begins to notice that his shots are missing less. Somewhere along the line, he starts to expect his baskets to make it. When he thinks of the ball, and the hoop, he begins to evaluate in terms of technique and skill rather than luck.

He can run more, last longer, accelerate faster and come to a stop without tripping over his own feet. The court, which had seemed so indomitable under the flooding stadium lights of the Winter Cup, seems less and less holy, further and further from the realm of the divine. Furihata begins to dream that one day he could step upon it and come away unburnt.

A month later, Tsuchida-senpai shoots him a look of surprise and slaps him on the back when he finds that they’re running side by side.

“Keep it up, Furi!” he says, breathing strained. Furihata, panting so hard he can’t say anything at all, swallows and nods. Sweat is dripping into his eyes, and his heart is pounding so hard he feels as if it might break. He can’t help but feel the urge to push even harder. A chrysalis is meant for breaking, just as an egg is meant for hatching. Furihata had never put himself as something with potential before – but perhaps, perhaps –

Coach, standing at the edge of the court as usual, blasts her whistle before anything else can be said, and they break it up. They have a practice game, and Furihata moves as usual for the sidelines, but Coach stops him before he can sit down.

“Koganei-kun,” she says, eyes narrowed. “Swap with Furihata.”

Furihata’s eyes bug. He stares at Coach with his mouth open. He points at himself: me? Are you sure?

Coach stares at him, and lets out an exasperated sigh as she rolls her eyes, pushing her hair out of her face. “The other school doesn’t have all day, you know. Furihata, you’re up!”

Furihata stares, and stares. Only when Kuroko, sitting on the bench with Kagami – Seirin is conserving their best plays for the Interhigh – says mildly that Furihata should better get on the court does he move. It’s mechanical and half-believed, but he plays.

They win the game, not easily, but steadily enough that there is no desperation, only quiet, thrumming certainty, by the third quarter.

Fukuda and Kawahara whoop when he comes off the court. He’s beaming so hard his face feels like it might crack. The game thrums under his skin like a pulsing drum, beating the taste of victory – sweet, like honey – into his blood. The team crowds around in a volley of cheers – discreet and lowkey, so as not to be obnoxious to the other team. Their warmth crowds Furihata on all sides, but for a moment, he’s alone in the crystalline, perfect joy of being more than he could have ever imagined.

Furihata’s put into more games after that. Not every game, but enough that he makes a clear departure from being purely a benchwarmer to something of a backup starter. The sheer thrill of the first game doesn’t last, but is replaced in turn by a quiet, warm satisfaction.

Even _girls_ start noticing him more. Someone leaves a note in his locker telling him to meet them on a rooftop. It’s a girl who’s in his class, who does her hair in braided pigtails, and flushes shyly as she confesses. The wind, Furihata notices, and remembers afterwards, picks up one of her pigtails, but the angle at which she’s standing means the other way hangs still. The asymmetry lingers in his mind long after the words of the confession are lost. She speaks in a mumble, and won’t look him in the eye the whole time. At a loss of what to say, Furihata rejects her. He feels sorry for her, and a little awkward for himself, as well as a little relieved for both of them – but he starts to notice the attention that Fukuda claims has always been there.

It’s exhilarating and terrifying. Furihata’s always just managed a cut above average – never good enough to excel, not bad enough to fail. Muddling through is his strength, but it is hard to muddle through with Akashi at his back, breathing into his ears, whispering promises and secrets that seem to open doors that Furihata didn’t even know existed for him.

It’s weird. He should be grateful towards Akashi, but all he can muster is a quiet self-satisfaction. To some extent, all of this has dropped on his lap, and Furihata spends far more time wondering what he himself feels at this seeming stroke of divine intervention than what Akashi wants or feels in offering it to him. He doesn’t quite know what to do, how to act.

And he suspects, still, that this exchange is not as one-sided as it would appear on the surface. Furihata is ordinary, and thus has many peers. Akashi is exceptional, and equally repulsive as he is attractive in his cold, uncompromising talent.

Furihata keeps Kuroko’s words close to his heart. Akashi never does anything without purpose. It goes without saying that Furihata fits into one of those purposes. Remembering this makes it easier to bear when Akashi swaps between painfully formal and incredibly personal at the drop of a hat.

Akashi will quiz him on the Meiji Restoration and Furihata will remark that he knows so much and then Akashi will say that tradition and history has always called to him because his father seems so keen on rejecting both, at which point they will both go silent before Akashi calls attention to the fact that although Furihata’s essay raises good points, it’s discussion of foreign relations doesn’t address with much nuance the internal unrest and political division driving, confusing and preventing it. At which point they return to studying.

Or once Furihata asked what Akashi liked doing in his spare time, and Akashi had responded, “enjoyment was never on the priorities of my tutors,” before belatedly seeming to realise at Furihata’s weak, “I see,” the abnormalcy of such a response, and adding, “I like horseriding.” Or Furihata remarking that having so many tutors isn’t something he can imagine, and Akashi replying, “really? I wasn’t in a public school until middle school.”

Once Akashi had said, casual as anything, in the middle of explaining that gravity wasn’t actually constant, “people like comparing close relationships to gravity. It’s a mistake and an unreasonable metaphor. Gravity exists despite our best efforts, but no relationship is automatic, not between lovers and not between a parent and a child.” Another time, in the middle of pointing out that Furihata could do with practicing sudden stops and turns, he mentions “basketball is not an approved sport in my household, but excellence in everything is the motto. For this reason, more than anything else, basketball is what I must excel in.”

It’s a lot of pretty personal stuff, even as circumscribed as the words are. Sometimes Furihata wants to scream and interrupt: are you sure you should be saying any of this to me? It’s not, after all, like he and Akashi are close.

But the way Akashi says it, so casually, effectively prevents Furihata from being able to bring it up as _really weird_. And besides, he’s never really annoyed by it. If anything, it’s sort of gratifying.

For a man who’s so reputed as being remarkably selfish and jealous, Akashi has not seemed to want anything from him other than the implicit exchange of his company. For this reason, if no other, Furihata is convinced that Akashi needs him more than he needs Akashi. The feeling is heady, almost sacrilegious.

Someone needs _him_. Akashi Seijuurou needs _him_. It lights him from the inside, like a hearth lit in his chest.

Furihata has spent almost all of his life being average – to return that state might disappoint him, but it wouldn’t destroy him. He hasn’t asked, or pursued, or chased Akashi’s attentions, and to be honest if he lost them he would probably feel more relieved than anything else. Knowing Akashi feels like in a perpetual state of suspended animation, waiting for time to begin moving to the chimes of reality again.

Somehow, it all feels so unreal. Furihata rides the high, almost delirious. Some part of him, tethered like a shadow, waits for it all to crash down around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the introspection and exposition has been quite heavy. I promise things will actually, you know, happen, in the next few chapters.


	9. Chapter 9

Coach’s whistle lances through the stuffy air of the gym. The group of sweaty, smelly teenage boys freeze and look up from where they are panting or jumping or running on the court, like a pack of well-trained dogs. The newcomers have been sufficiently indoctrinated that they react to Riko’s whistle with the same military attention as everyone else. It makes, if nothing else, for a magnificent display of club unity.

“Ok, that’s enough,” she shouts. “Cool-down stretches, then pack up! Remember, don’t skip cooling down – I’ll know.”

She gives them a narrow, squinty-eyed glare, pointing accusingly at the group as a whole. Some people shuffle their feet nervously, Hyuuga among them. The squeak of sports shoes against the waxed wooden floors is surprisingly loud.

Coach’s face breaks into a smile. “Other than that, nice work today, everyone!”

The room takes a collective sigh of relief. They split off into pairs to help each other with their stretches. Furihata automatically gravitates towards Kawahara, before he remembers that as a senpai, he has a duty to show the younger years how to do their stretches. He does a sort of about-turn, and hopes nobody saw as he starts casting about for any unoccupied, confused-looking first years that haven’t managed to pair off yet.

He finds one shrunk into the corner of the gym, hiding in stark prominence under the shadow of the basketball hoop. The posture seems to emanate both sullenness and shyness, a sort of reluctant desire for companionship self-inhibited into begrudging isolation. The first-year’s eyes dart around, glossing over the increasingly fewer un-partnered players still left on the court. A red flush starts to creep up from his collar.

Furihata steps up.

“Hey!” He pastes his most welcoming, non-threatening smile onto his face. “Let’s find a place to cool down, before coach gets mad at us.”

The first-year squints at him suspiciously, but allows Furihata to lead him to a relatively clear area of the court, where they sit and begin their stretches. There’s somehow none of the relief Furihata had expected.

He keeps up a series of mindless chatter at his he pushes the first-year’s back – an Ando Kazue, he finds out from a mumbled whisper – down towards the floor. Ando seems disinclined to say anything much in return, so Furihata lets his voice join with the rest of the conversation around the room. Being a quiet spot in a room full of talking people is the most painful thing possible.

Furihata talks about anything that comes to mind, about breakfast, class, aiming idle questions at the stretching first-year under his hands that go unanswered as he moves onto another topic.

He’s almost surprised when Ando speaks. Almost affronted at the polite thank you, and the short bow. Somehow, he’d expected a bit more warmth, but then he shrugs to himself. Ando looks shy, it’s fine. God knows Kagami had been standoffish those first few weeks, but Kagami had proved to be as soft as honey on the inside.

Then again, Kagami hadn’t looked like he needed friends. His whole demeanour had screamed that you would be lucky if _he_ deigned to talk to _you_. Ando – the poor kid – simply looks as if he’s trying too hard to not need company that it’s all the more painfully obvious how much he desires it.

He looks up to find that Fukuda’s done with his first year as well, and weaves his way through the stretching pairs to meet a familiar face. Somehow, though he’s happy to do it for Ando, the thought of Ando putting his hands on Furihata and helping _Furihata_ stretch makes him uncomfortable. It’s probably a seniority thing, and he relaxes his head to the floor as Fukuda pushes down on his back to just the point of pain.

“Coach is really putting us through it,” Fukuda grumbles from above. “I won’t be able to feel my legs tomorrow.”

It’s a statement Furihata can relate to. His own legs feel like wobbly noodles, and even stretched out and limp on the floor, they’re in pain.

“The Interhigh is coming up,” Furihata sighs, the last of his cooling sweat dripping onto the wooden floor. He speaks into the smooth timber boards, and hears his voice reverberate in the miniature cavern from by his lowered head and his outstretched arms. “We lost last year. She’s probably raring for revenge.”

“Not just her. All the senpais, and Kagami and Kuroko as well. They’ve really been putting their all into it.”

“It’s admirable.” Furihata grunts as Fukuda pushes down hard one last time, before relenting. He comes up with a gasp for air, and stretches out his back in the other direction. “Ok, your turn.”

There’s a brief shuffle as they rearrange themselves. It’s a familiar routine, and comforting after the high-paced focus of practice. Stretch, feel where the burn is, lean into it, relax. Cooling down is always about relaxing into where it hurts, and trusting that it’ll hurt less that way.

“And you?” Fukuda grunts as he leans forward to touch his toes. “What are you feeling?”

“About what?” Furihata pushes down, one hand on Fukuda’s lower back, the other on the flat of his shoulder blades. He’s being deliberately obtuse, he knows, but somehow acknowledgment of his own progress without prompting feels like hubris. Fukuda hisses, and takes his moment to catch his breath before he answers.

“The Interhigh. I reckon you’ll have court-time this year. What do you think about that?”

Furihata laughs, affecting disbelief. “Not with all the senpais still here. I’m leagues are away. I’m excited to give my best, but I think I’ll be doing it on the bench.”

“You can match Tsuchida-senpai now,” Fukuda says. Furihata can’t see his face, folded as he is into himself. He relents on the pressure and feels the air expand in Fukuda’s lungs, reverberating through the ribcage to tingle at the spine under Furihata’s fingers. “You’re probably equal to Koganei or Mitobe-senpai. By the time we get to the Interhigh, you’ll be better.”

“Everyone’s improving,” Furihata brushes it off.

“But you’re improving faster.” Fukuda leans over further to wrap his fingers just barely around his toes. The line of body goes taut and tense, and his voice, when he speaks, is strained. “You’ve been improving faster all year.”

Furihata blinks, then looks away. “That’s not really something that can be credited to me.”

“Isn’t it?” Fukuda straightens with a grunt. “What do you mean by that?” he asks, twisting around as he folds close his legs. Furihata plops onto the ground next to him with a sigh.

“You know.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t feel like my work. It’s all _his_ guidance, you know?”

It comes out more bitter than he expects, and a little petulant. Fukuda pauses, but rather than reacting with distaste or disbelief, he smiles.

“Isn’t earning that guidance part of the work itself?” He cocks his head to the side, cracking his neck. “One good turn deserves another, you know? At least that’s how I see it. Besides, you’ve worked hard as well.” Fukuda stands up, clapping Furihata on the shoulder as he heads off the lockers. “Well, at any rate, _I_ think you’ll play. Just make up your mind as to whether _you_ feel ready or not.

The truth is, Furihata thinks he’ll play as well. It’s just not something he can say aloud, though he has to admit it makes something spark to life within him to hear other people prompting the same sentiment. The denial is, if he’s being honest with himself, rather perfunctory. He’s been giving his all as well, throwing everything into the court and the game: for the first time, he thinks that this effort might actually lead somewhere other than cheering himself hoarse on the bench.

Shaking his head, he heaves himself up from the floor and heads off after Fukuda towards the lockers. Cleaning up is the first year’s duty now, and he has to say, he doesn’t miss it. Chasing down basketballs from mysteriously high alcoves and dark corners has never been his definition of fun, especially when his whole body aches from rigorous training. It’s with a sigh of relief that he bypasses the groaning first years. He could really get used to this seniority privilege.

“Good work today Sei-chan!” Mibuchi is practically singing as he wafts over, throwing a towel that floats through the air in a deceptively gentle arc. Akashi catches it one-handed and wipes the sweat off his face.

“You too, Mibuchi,” he replies, after having caught his breath. He heads over to the benches and takes a long draught of water. “See that you and the others rest up well. At this point, overly practicing is likely to do more damage than good.”

“You got it!” Mibuchi does a little faux-twirl, before suddenly wheeling in on Akashi with a smile on his lips, and eyes inscrutable of anything except intensity. His hair falls like feathers around his face, framing it with a false delicacy. “What about that friend of yours? Is he going to come see us win the Interhigh?”

Akashi pauses where he’s recapping his bottle. He slides his gaze towards Mibuchi, and considers the transparent dig for information. He hadn’t been aware that his social life had aroused such curiousity, and decides to demur first. “Victory, while likely, is without guarantee. I would have thought last year to have taught us all better than to assume.”

A mulish, vaguely chastised expression crosses Mibuchi’s lovely face, before dissolving once more into his sharp-edged smile.

“Of course, Akashi,” he says, and flicks his hair out of his eyes. “Then will your friend be there to see us as we try to win the Interhigh?”

Akashi considers. Seirin is strong this year, having amassed new talent without losing of their old. However, there shouldn’t be many new tricks. The only novelty is Furihata’s ascendance. But Akashi isn’t surprised by this, nor will he be surprised by anything Furihata manages to do on the court. From what information their new manager has gathered, all the promising first years are still not experienced enough to match up to the second and third years, nor do they have the raw, meteoric power that fuelled Kagami and Kuroko’s – to be honest, his own and each of the Generation of Miracles’ – unprecedented rise.

Seirin is strong this year, as it was last year. Akashi knows than to underestimate them. But will it be enough? Touou is strong, as is Kaijou and Shuutoku. Akashi knows better than anyone the monsters he has had a part in shaping, the monster he himself has been shaped into.

He closes his eyes. “With some luck on his part,” he pronounces with some of the old, solemn gravity, “he may be fortunate enough to share the same court as us.”

“…I see.” Mibuchi laughs. “I should have known Sei-chan’s friend would be a basketball player! He must be pretty good then. Do we know him?”

“He is average.” The statement rings heavy. Akashi pulls the towel of his head and folds it into thirds, before putting it onto the bench. He decides to make a small, incomplete concession. “You’ve seen him before.”

Frustration passes over Mibuchi’s face once more. Akashi keeps his own impassive, but a thrum of amusement rings through his chest. Baiting Mibuchi is always entertaining, playing off his natural tendency for sly prodding to never give him what he wants in direct words. Besides, Akashi had never planned on identifying Furihata in the first place, so really, Mibuchi’s efforts are wasted.

“Well,” Mibuchi says with something of a huff, “I hope we’ll have a good game.”

Akashi smiles. “I’m sure we will,” he says, echoing an empty sentiment, and fights to stop the smile spreading across his face as a full-blown pout develops on Mibuchi’s face.

“Now you are simply being unfair, Sei-chan!” he cries with an exaggerated point of a finger.

Then he pulls his hand back to run it through his hair, suave once more beneath the indulgent performativity.

“Well,” he says, and his face suddenly becomes cruel and hungry. It’s an expression Akashi is as familiar with as his own soul. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if it’s Sei-chan’s friend, we’re not going to go easy on him.”

“I would hardly expect you to give anything but your best,” Akashi responds, and watches Mibuchi’s eyes harden into glittering jewels. He tosses his head with a laugh, and goes off to join Hayama and Nebuya, who wait at the edges of the court. To their credit, they wait until they’ve turned a corner before they huddle into a whispering mass, although Hayama gives them away with a loud “what did Akashi say – “ that’s cut off by a round of equally loud shushing.

Akashi smiles. Some part of him thinks that this will make Furihata afraid of him again, but there is nothing even Akashi can do about their difference in natural ability. There is only so far that Akashi can lower himself, after all, to match Furihata’s level. He has tried, and any more would be too forced, too unnatural.

Akashi is not Akashi, after all, without the edge of victory gilding him. The emperor and his uncrowned kings. He almost feels sorry for Furihata. It will take a long time to make up for the certain blow that being so thoroughly outclassed will do to the progression of their relationship – but Akashi can be patient. He’d always known it would be hard, to bridge the natural boundaries created by such a sharp and manifest distance in potential. It’s why he’d rarely bothered to try before. Even in Teikou, where he had tried, he’d ended up unconsciously or through some sort of selection bias gravitating towards those exceptional as himself.

He’s trying now, though, with Furihata. What Akashi tries at, he is rarely content to let fail.


End file.
